Slashdot Mirror

All I want it to do is play mp3's...

foobar2000 will serve your needs well. It does everything you could possibly want to do within the realm of playing music, and virtually nothing else. Low memory footprint/CPU requirements, simple and functional GUI (without fancy skins), and very powerful. Check it out.

They probably focus on the player most people "in the know" use instead. Foobar2000

You can always upgrade to http://www.foobar2000.org/ instead. No more nonstandard interface, a decent mass-tagger, excellent replay-gain support, etc. What's not to like?

http://www.foobar2000.org/

foobar2000 and foo_record. Can play and record pretty much every audio format imaginable (although you probably want to find the 0.7 diskwriters until they're all ported to the new 0.8 API.. ask me if you need a hand, but you should be able to find stuff on the very useful forum) in 64 bit float precision. It can apply software DSP's, perform tagging operations at a level which puts the likes of Tag & Rename to shame, and is more configurable than any other audio player out there (because it's more than just an audio player ;)

Most of the components are BSD licensed too. And don't let the default look put you off; it's skinnable and you can go a *long* way with nice formatting strings.

I could go on, but I should really stop gushing. I've successfully converted quite a few peeps by doing this though, so there must be some truth in it :)

You're spot on; I do my best to make sure all my music is in FLAC format; it's what I rip to and it's what I try to download (from legitimate or *cough* sources). It's not because I really notice any difference, or even pretend I can; it's because I don't have to worry about what encoder settings to use, what version of lame or oggenc, whether MusePack or AAC really the better format. I don't even have to worry significantly over what lossless format I choose because I can change whenever I like.

If I get a portable music player, I can *trivially* encode them to the best format it supports (e.g. 64kbps Ogg Vorbis may be perfect for a portable, since you likely won't notice the lower quality and you can fit more music on, but I sure as hell don't want to listen to them through my Sennheisers) direct from my main music player.

Disk space once held me back from switching to lossless; but now I can get a practically silent 160G drive for around 80; I've got nearly half a TB in my desktop machine now, so why should I care?

Not everyone thinks it's worth it, obviously; that's why we have lossy formats in the first place. Lossless is still *the* way to go, and I'm quite happy to pay extra to get it.

I use Winamp for playing files with weird extensions, because there are so many nifty plugins that let me listen to PSFs, NSFs, etc.

I used to use Winamp for that, but now I use Foobar 2000. While not as polished as Winamp, it's an amazing piece of software.

I used Winamp2 until 2.91 started randomly stopping in the middle of tracks. I swear it was the upgrade to Dell GX240s around here-- everybody started having problems with Winamp. Winamp3 didn't appeal to me very much, so I went through Sonique, Zinf, and a few others too horrible to remember, and finally decided that foobar2000 sucked the least. Its interface isn't pretty by any means, but I keep it minimized unless I'm switching tracks anyway. Beware: It doesn't do ID3v2 tags, only ID3v1. I rip all my stuff to Ogg Vorbis anyway, so that's not my problem :)

*cough* We've seen all of that before .. And it starts up in 0.5 nanoseconds too.
Although it doesn't look as sexy as winamp, it (imho) beats winamp in every aspect.

One word: Foobar2000

sorry, here's the homepage of the freedb plugin for foobar. You just drop foo_freedb.dll into your components directory. This is of course only an interface between the freedb and the player. There are, as per link in parent, many others.

It may even end up being the case where they release a new major version number, and it ends up being so bad that everyone sticks with the previous one instead!

Perhaps; that seems to be where it's at. Windows only (hey, like >90% of computer users!), but excellent. Can't comment on XAMP, never heard of it! (probably what most of you are saying about foobar?). I agree with you that Winamp's time is over, but it takes a long time for most people to move on - WA is/was an incredibly well penetrated (can i use the verb like that?) product. It's still synonymous with MP3s and 'computer music' to many people. They might just be using it for as long as it works on their OS.

The decoder is included with winamp (at least the standard and full versions). They might have added it to the lite version too recently thereby making the "plugin" pointless? (Peter's plugin is out there, if you really want it)

Besides, everyone who was using the Winamp "classic" is using foobar2000 now anyhow :-)

...and even non-nogap mp3s (the Karma will now drop silent frames starting and trailing mp3s)

1. Use an encoder that stores two important variables, encoder delay and encoder padding, such as LAME 3.90.3 (recommended version.)
2. Play back MP3s that knows how to use these values to achieve perfectly gapless playback - I only know of foobar2000 that does this at present.

Don't you mean foobar2000 using the AAC plugin?

Don't you mean foobar2000 using the AAC plugin?

I bet theres already 100 music players that are half finished and not a single one of them as good as Winamp.

I most definitely wouldn't use Winamp as an example of a good audio player. Back in the time I used it a lot and even after learning all the necessary keyboard shortcuts I couldn't help thinking that the UI was horrible.

Then I found foobar2000 and my life became tolerable again... for a moment. Now I have a wonderful audio player that only runs in an OS I happen to very strongly dislike.

I thought Microsoft assumed all customers wanted DRM (which is why it's going to feature so much in Longhorn!)

Microsoft can put as much DRM into their new OS and media player as they like.

I shall continue using foobar2000 to play all my audio.

Try foobar2000. It's a music player but it has a built in 'mass tagger' that has an option to guess the tag info from the filename. There are many other taggers and players that have this functionality as well. Do a quick search on google. Even if you're a big lazy turd there's no good excuse not to have ID3 tags in your MP3 files.

Foobar 2000 is now at a 0.71 release and is by far the most full featured and elegant media player I've seen on Windows. First time users might it a little sparse as the interface is very bland and not skinnable like Winamp or Sonique. However, under the hood is an amazing plugin architecture that is very well designed.

Some highlights for me:

• Oggs, Mp3s, MODs, FLACs, AACs, and heaps more are all playable.
• Keypresses for every single action the player can perform are configurable either as local or global (ie, you can control F2K while in another application)
• The masstagger. This is amazing for reorganising your audio collection. It can guess album titles, song titles and artists from filenames, add arbitrary tags and store all this information is AWE2 within each file.
• The album list. Once you've tagged all your files, you can heavily customise the way your files are organised and displayed in the album list.
• The search facilities. These are second to none. Very fast and very powerful.

If you are using Windows and are listening to mp3s or oggs through WinAmp or Media Play I thoroughly recommend giving Foobar2000 a go.

Kudos to the F2K team!

So let me get this straight, a web site with no code or corporate involvement was hoping to create a standard for audio?

No. Hydrogenaudio is an audio discussion board where development and testing of various audio formats/encoders and the foobar2000 player takes place, but this is not the main aspect of the board. It's just an informed community (well, mostly) that maintains a high standard of discussion (unlike this place).

Which is why I wish this had never been posted here, now look at the mess and all the misinformation flowing here already... >:(

Maybe you should give foobar2000 a try - it's from one of the winamp2 developpers, it's very unbloated, and supports all kinds of plugins and looks.

Maybe you should give foobar2000 a try - it's from one of the winamp2 developpers, it's very unbloated, and supports all kinds of plugins and looks.

One of the finest multi-format audio players, its simple looks belie its power, extensibility and ease of use. Give foobar2000 a whirl.

Developed at Hydrogenaudio by Peter Pawlowski [of former Winamp fame] et al.

... is a 20MB download, has a 35MB memory footprint, doesn't support FLAC, Ogg or MPC (hence doesn't play most of my music collection), doesn't seem to support ReplayGain, has a huge slow GUI, and doesn't seem to have a plugin system that would allow me or others to fix any of these things.

So why should I use it instead of foobar2000, or even WinAMP?

Well, there is Foobar 2000. But I doubt that's going to solve any integration problems. (being about 200 dollars short of an mp3 player I don't know)

Media Player Classic - Windows ol' mplayer2.exe on steorids. Reads DVD, too. Tons of options, thats a must.

Foobar2000 - Created by an ex Winamp developper, its main goal is to be minimalistic. Tired of all those players sucking your ressources just for loading/displaying the skin? Try this.

Irfanview, image viewer, already mentionned

dbPowerAmp Music Converter - audio converter. supported: CDa/mp3/wav/ogg/wma, name em all. To convert, just right-click on the file in the file explorer.

PuTTY, of course

SmartFTP - not minimalistic, but quite complete FTP client

Also, I personally use Microsoft WTS Client to connect to my WindowsXP box. Shame on me. Should i switch to VNC? (I liked the sound feature in XP's :/)

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip or7 Zip 3.11

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 6.20

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 or Pegasus Mail 4.12

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 or FileZilla 2.2.1

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70or Trillian Basic 0.74E

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp

Graphics viewer (other

... try foobar2000

we're getting pretty far off target from a family home computer here but, here are some of my favorite alternatives to the above list;

mozilla - if prefer MyIE2
ws ftp - i much prefer filezilla
PuTTY - try transparent putty
vnc - if you're running xp or 2k you should go with ultravnc
gnu-emacs - yikes!if you must have a unix style text editor under windows, may i recommend cream for vim
free-av - i'd probably go with AVG anti virus
boingo - don't forget netstumbler

here are a few more i install before i ever run a new system;

foobar2000 console2
divx player
stuffit expander
trillian
and if you need an email client try popcorn

i've got links to lots more free windows software at my links page

This is easy. You're looking for Foobar2000.

Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats.

Features:
- Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player
- Audio formats supported "out-of-the-box": WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3
- Audio formats supported through official addons: MPEG-4 AAC, FLAC, OggFLAC, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, CDDA, TFMX, SPC, various MOD types; extraction on-the-fly from RAR and ZIP archives
- Full Unicode support on Windows NT
- ReplayGain support
- Low memory footprint, efficient handling of really large playlists
- Advanced file info processing capabilities (generic file info box and masstagger)
- Highly customizable playlist display
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts
- Most of standard components are opensourced under BSD license (source included with the SDK)

Whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls.

An excellent Notepad replacement is metapad. No faster editor has more features, and no editor with more features is faster.

1. foobar 2000 for music playback without Winamp's awful tiny unintuitive UI and with plenty of features to keep any audio-lover happy.
2. Media Player Classic - A great, lightweight but featureful WMP6-alike.
3. For more advanced users, PenguiNet - a lovely Windows SSH/telnet client. Not as lightweight or free as PuTTY, but more intuitive, and has my name on it :)
4. Something addictive.
5. Opera and/or Firebird.. must wean all those users off IE.
6. DScaler - I'm yet to find a better TV Card app. Lightweight, stable, and Free.
7. DigiGuide - Excellent TV guide, in the UK at least.
8. WinRar - as vital for Windows as gzip is for *ix.
9. Nero - Must-have CD-RW software.
10. Ad-Aware and friends.

Outside of Office software, Audacity is a great free audio editor

SciTE or the java-based Jedit are good text editors.

The GIMP is a good image editor, available here for Windows.

Mozilla or one of its components for mail/web browsing

For media playing you might want to try Zinf (formerly FreeAmp), Foobar2000 (nice light weight music player), WinAMP for Windows. MPlayer is a good video player for Linux (and Windows) and XMMS is a capable music player for Linux.

Celestia is a nice space exploration program.

Jabber is good for instant messaging or Trillian or GAIM if you need to chat on MSN, AIM, ICQ etc.

GNUCash is a capable accounting program.

Oh yeah, and for email, I suggest setting up an IMAP server on an old machine and using that to store your email. This can be quite difficult, though allows you to browse your email from Linux and Windows. Thunderbird is rock solid and good even though only in the early stages of development.

foobar2000

This means that the quality is CD-quality

Parent is probably a troll, but I'll bite.

On average, lossless compression can do 2:1 ratio, so that's 20-30MB out of 300MB worth of wav. I'd say 7-10% is rather impressive considering WinRAR recognizes audio formats and does optimisations on them. Try comparing against ZIP or something.

Furthermore does RAR allow you to stream the audio? Seek (sample-accurately)? Error resistant (a small error won't affect the whole stream)? Can you play the RARs in your favourite audio player? Well I guess Foobar2000 can , with it's zip/rar support but then it has to decompress the whole (10MB/minute) track before being able to play it, while it can play a FLAC directly from any point in time of the track.